How can we boldly reimagine the future?

I have a daily ritual: My husband and I take a walk around our neighborhood to reflect on our days and talk about our family and dreams. This walk has become a means of self-care that my body and soul crave. It reinvigorates me during these months when the days are shorter, and because of COVID and the Minnesota winter, we spend most of our time indoors.

It’s tough to think about the future when there is so much to do in the present. With vaccines, we see a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel but the end is not here yet. There is exciting momentum for health care reform and racial equity but there are no quick fixes to entrenched challenges. Some days, it’s tough to think beyond tomorrow, beyond the next walk.

Yet we must do it because the future is coming faster than we think. Look at the unprecedented past year, when events that seemed like far-off fever dreams came crashing down on us. The pandemic that infectious disease experts had predicted for decades is our daily reality. We will end it with vaccines that a diverse team of researchers developed in record time with ground-breaking mRNA technology. Zoom meetings and telehealth — which were unfamiliar to most of us a year ago — have become the way we routinely work and receive health care. Meanwhile, wildfires across the U.S. West Coast last summer showed us that the impacts of climate change are happening now, not in a distant future.

Most future events have long lead-ups, and if you look at what’s happening in the present, you can see early warning signs. Too often, we take a passive stance. How many times have you heard the phrase: “Who knows what the future holds?” While we cannot predict the future, we can make educated guesses about what it will look like. We can examine trends and emergent issues and explore possibilities around what will happen in 10, 20, or 30 years. And that sort of foresight gives us the power to shape the future, not just muddle through or react to it.

About a year ago, I took a lead role in FORESIGHT, an initiative to design a bold, new future for health in the U.S. FORESIGHT shows that shaping the future is possible and that who participates in the shaping matters. Our aim has been to go beyond the traditional holders of health power to talk to thousands of people in our communities about what they want and need for the future of health.

Inspired by FORESIGHT, this series reflects what we have heard from experts in different corners of the country about working with communities to build the future of health and well-being:

• The CEO of Jefferson Health in Philadelphia explained how we could manage a pandemic very differently — and successfully — ten years from now.
• Missouri Foundation for Health revealed increasing statewide evidence in favor of a strong safety net for good health.
• The president of the Endowment for Health in New Hampshire recounted what happens when we gather as a community and collectively consider the future that we want.
• Blue Shield of California Foundation highlighted how emerging trends in the future of work are tied to health and well-being today and in the future.

There’s a common thread weaving through all these perspectives: We can emerge from our current challenges smarter and healthier if we are bold enough to reimagine the future and act. I take this to heart in my work life, where I am constantly considering how my company can be even more inclusive and welcoming to promote the well-being of all of our employees — today and decades from now. Reimagining the future is as much my daily ritual as that walk.

FORESIGHT has also entered a new and exciting phase of its work. Over the past year, we created a report that scanned the horizon of health and well-being and revealed 80+trends and emergent issues that will impact health in the coming decades. These include climate change, gig economies, and increasingly prevalent technologies like artificial intelligence and gene editing.

We used these to build several scenarios of possible futures. Then we spent many months taking these scenarios to nearly 8,000 people in communities across the country to hear what inspires and makes them hopeful or fearful. We learned a great deal from this process. Some things were predictable, like people want access to affordable, high-quality healthcare and an economic system that reduces inequities. But other things were somewhat surprising — like many people would prefer to live in small, diverse, and environmentally sustainable communities rather than big cities. When we asked people what they want in the future, they didn’t ask for artificial intelligence or gene editing; they talked about fundamentals like community, belonging, and basic needs.

FORESIGHT recently took all these insights and seeded a vision for the future of health and well-being. This involved a multi-week, collaborative process with more than 100 amazing individuals who zoomed in from all parts of the country. They included a young leader in the urban composting movement, a family doctor who sits on a foundation board, a farmer and proponent of sustainable agriculture, an advocate for transgender inclusion in the workplace, leaders in regional health philanthropies, and so many more. The participants brought ideas, enthusiasm, and their unique perspectives to the table.

What emerged was an innovative and exhilarating experience! Over the course of weeks, energy coalesced around four big must-haves for the future: economic well-building; holistic, culturally rooted healthcare; regenerative practices for people and the planet; and just and equitable communities for everyone. Bringing these must-haves to life requires changing policies, shifting resources, changing behaviors, and more. In the coming months, the FORESIGHT team will work with our existing partners — and explore new collaborations — to realize the must-haves in communities across the country. We’re excited that our efforts have the potential to catalyze change.

There’s no better time to start this work than right now, as we slowly emerge from the tumult of a global pandemic and all the health inequities and inadequacies it has exposed. As the business guru and author Jim Collins writes in his new book BE 2.0: “If the first two decades of the 21st century have taught us anything, it’s that uncertainty is chronic, instability is permanent, disruption is common. We can neither predict nor govern events. There will be no new normal.”

While Collins is right that we cannot “predict or govern” the future, we can use our best knowledge of trends, emergent issues, and people’s priorities, hopes, and dreams to shape it. FORESIGHT has unearthed goals and values we all can get behind. We look forward to the courageous and difficult work of making them a reality.